VLADIMIR VELICKOVIC

Vladimir Velickovic was born on August 11, 1935, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where he exhibited for the first time in 1951. In 1960, he graduated from the Belgrade School of Architecture. His first solo exhibition was hosted by the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

In 1965, he won the Prix de la Biennale de Paris. He moved to Paris the following year, and continues to live and work there to this day.

Velickovic had his first solo exhibition in Paris at the Galerie du Dragon in 1967.

In 1983, he was appointed professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, a position he held for 18 years.

In 2009, he established a fund to support young Serb artists, the Fonds Vladimir Velickovic pour le dessin.

Velickovic holds the following honorary titles:

Member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Institut de France

Member of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Knight of the Légion d’Honneur.

“The basic elements of a painting are rooted somewhere deep inside ourselves. In our temperament and vision of events; in the baggage we inherit from childhood; in history itself, senseless (and cruel) as it is, and which, in spite of us, is a part of our everyday experience. A history that we make and that makes us. The reality of violence—violent reality—was always a kind of twofold imposition for me. It wasn’t me who chose it, at least I don’t think so. Violence was already there, present, heavy, and terrifying, in combat gear, in a state of war and in the aftermath of war, dense with bursts of machine gun fire and the outpouring of commands. I belong to a generation that played with violence (and in its shadow), that grew up without anything changing much, and that continues to live within view of this monstrosity. We wake up with it, we go to bed with it. Can we reject it, not see it, be indifferent to it? It gets under the skin; it’s there, resilient, always renewed, not especially imaginative—a real pain, to tell the truth.

What to do? Address it, live with it; in any case, there’s no getting away from it. […] Alain Jouffroy says: “Behind every picture, there is a real war.” I am immersed in that war—a war that continues from picture to picture. It concerns me, it’s part of my everyday life. I don’t try to run from it. […] Maybe it’s a question of engagement?”

“When we fled Belgrade under bombing, I was six years old. I probably wasn’t aware of what I was seeing, but the scene in fact engraved itself deep in my memory and I took it away with me. Along with a few others, it has stayed with me to this day, surprisingly sharp and clear. This image, these images of war were of course reproduced in the media of the time, and then in the history books. My memories have been continually reactivated by these publications. Though I’ve never subjected myself to analysis, doing so might shed light on the reasons for my commitment as an artist to this tragic path that is mine. The ever-renewed instant of the tragedy of existence, that is to say, of aggression and violence, of the destruction that results from everything man inflicts on man, is surely not unrelated to these seen images, […] these first images. The basis of all my work is this subjective memory, set alongside real aberrations and the potential ones that, unfortunately, every day threaten the future.”